


The 55% Match

by Chaos_Is_A_Ladder



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: F/F, Femslash February, Femslash February Trope Bingo, alternative universe, established bisexual amy santiago
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-29
Updated: 2016-02-29
Packaged: 2018-05-23 23:21:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6133610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chaos_Is_A_Ladder/pseuds/Chaos_Is_A_Ladder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For full disclosure: this is an AU fic in which Amy Santiago is still a detective, but isn't part of the Nine Nine. </p><p>Amy Santiago is bored at work, and she hates being bored at work. She has her dream job - police detective - for crying out loud! She's so bored, in fact, that she's agreed to set up an online dating profile, on which she gets matched with an intriguing and infuriatingly mysterious woman: Detective Rosa Diaz of the Nine Nine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The 55% Match

Amy is bored.

She hates being bored. Being bored isn’t part of the plan. Being bored means she’s failed at finding something meaningful to do, and she _always_ has something meaningful to do.

But right now? Amy is so, seriously bored.

Being a detective is great, and Amy loves that she’s referred to as Detective Amy Santiago now. But, being a detective in one of the quietest, safest precincts in New Jersey isn’t so great.

When she was offered this job, she had leapt at the chance without considering that she really wouldn’t be doing much of anything at all. Sometimes, Amy’s Amy-ness will conflict with itself, and her eagerness to rise up he ranks overpowered her usual need to double and triple-check everything that happens to her ever.

It’s not like this place is safe because of police action; it’s safe almost in spite of it. The police department she works at oversees a friendly, cozy little town with plenty of community involvement. If you were trying to invent a town that would self-regulate its own community members, it would be this place.

At the end of the day, it’s great that there’s so little crime here.  It’s just not that interesting.

So, Amy’s doing something that she promised to never do on a work-specific computer – she’s doing non-work-sanctioned activities! Specifically, she’s creating a profile on one of those online dating services. One of her friends had suggested she try it out, and after lots of urging, Amy has finally acquiesced.

It’s actually pretty fun. The site uses lots of data and analytics in order to match people up, so Amy is, naturally, working on completing all of the one thousand “match” questions that the site poses to her.

Amy always knew that big data would find her love.

The rest of her profile is pristine as well. She’s picked out a profile picture (one of her smiling, but still in a professional environment with a crisp, button-up shirt and blazer on). She’s filled out the rest of her profile with pleasantly conversational yet adequately verbose and grammatically correct descriptions of herself.

Amy might not catch many criminals in the day-to-day, but she might yet be able to catch herself a date.

Amy begins to scroll through her matches once she’s answered a couple hundred questions. They’re exactly what she’d expected going into this whole exercise. There are quite a few smartly-dressed, bookish younger men who match highly with her, and Amy quickly loses track of how many thick-rimmed, tortoise shell glasses and sweaters over button-down shirts she sees. A few women show up in the mix as well, and Amy begins to wonder if there’s a correlation between matching highly with her and wearing hip, oversized glasses.

Amy scrolls and scrolls until one woman catches her eye. The woman, Rosa Diaz, is a concerningly low 55% percent match with her.

Amy clicks on the profile anyway.

Rosa’s profile picture has clearly not been chosen with the care with which Amy chose her own. It’s out-of-focus and a bit hazy, and features Rosa in a black leather jacket, scowling at something just out of frame.

Normally, Amy would be concerned about seeing such a poorly conceived profile. Rosa’s answered only five match questions and her personal summary just reads: “No.” But Amy finds herself inexplicably intrigued all the same.

Amy sighs. This is silly. A 55% match off of five questions won’t do. She needs to trust in the analytics. She closes Rosa’s profile and looks through her other matches.

By the end of the day, Amy has gone through exactly fifty matches (finishing on such a clean number was unintentional, but still makes her happy). She’s scribble a few notes down about a lot of them – an “interesting view on police!” here, a “cute glasses?” there – but nobody has really caught her interest.

Nobody except for Rosa Diaz.

Amy doesn’t get it. Amy leaves work at 5 PM sharp (she figures if she gets to work exactly at 9 AM every single day, she’s earned the right to clock out right at 5), and for the entire car ride home she wonders why she’s so intrigued by this Rosa Diaz.

When Amy arrives at her apartment, her detour to the nearby Chinese restaurant leaving her with a takeout bag with “THANK YOU” emblazoned all over it, she has a pretty good working list of why she’s still thinking about Rosa when every other match has been pretty much entirely forgotten by now.

One is that Rosa is a police detective, which is significant in itself but made even moreso because she’s literally (genuinely literally) the only person who works in the criminal justice field who Amy matched with.

Another is that Rosa is very attractive, both in the conventional sense of having a generally symmetrical face and nice eyes and luscious hair and whatnot, but also in the sense that Rosa seems like she could be a bit dangerous, which is exciting in its own way.

Amy wonders if she’s into “bad girls” now, a thought that she files away for the time being.   

Next is that Rosa wrote down “no” as her summary for herself, which is somehow more interesting than the numerous two-paragraph, affable, grammatically pristine self-synopses she’s been reading all day.

It’s not a particularly impressive list of positives, and one that almost comically flies in the face of the mathematically significant 99% matches she’d been looking at earlier. But Amy is intrigued all the same.

Amy decides to look through her matches yet again as she starts to eat her Chinese takeout. She makes it through just two new profiles before she types in “Rosa Diaz” in the search bar. It’s not like Amy really expects to glean anything new – Rosa’s profile picture is as infuriatingly unrevealing as it was earlier this day, she’s barely written anything about herself, and she’s still just answered only five match questions. Amy finds herself getting unreasonably mad at this. She’d have so much more confidence in messaging Rosa if she’d only filled out more of her profile!

Amy groans and shuts her laptop. She’s certainly not going to get anywhere just staring at one very vague profile. After she consumes a calorically-appropriate amount of Chinese food, Amy watches a documentary about Scandinavian social programs as she reorganizes her collection of textbooks (which is very extensive) (Amy’s very proud of it). She goes to bed right at 10 PM.

The next day at work, Amy tries her hardest not to check her online dating profile. She really tries. But today, for whatever reason, not even doing paper work is fun – and that’s usually her favorite thing to do here! So, after her lunch break, she caves and checks.

All that waits for her are a handful of polite messages from potential male suitors. (Amy wonders if her profile picture, a professionally done headshot of herself in a gray blazer and a sensible shirt of an unsaturated blue tone, dissuades any creeps from messaging her). Oh, wait, that theory might be wrong. One message she’s gotten just reads “I’d bust the seams right off of that blazer, if you know what I mean,” sent from a guy who just calls himself Warren “Peace” Pembrook, which is just a terrible nickname, if Amy’s being totally honest.

Amy very politely responds to every single message, save the one from “Warren Peace.” They all seem like nice people, but Amy doesn’t find herself particularly enamored with any of them.

So, almost like clockwork, Amy looks up Rosa’s profile. Again. By now, she figures she might as well just bookmark it. (She doesn’t though, because that would be weird. Right?) There’s something so fascinating about it. The “no” summary. The blurry and hazy profile picture. The five match questions that she’s actually answered. That infuriating 55% match percentage.

Amy sighs and closes her browser window. This paperwork isn’t going to do itself, despite the amount of time she’s dedicated towards finding a way to automate the process. Sure, she may enjoy doing paperwork, but not as much as she enjoys workplace automation. It’s the way of the future!

That evening, as Amy enjoys a delicious meal of leftover Chinese takeout, she finds herself just _looking_ at Rosa’s profile picture. So, that’s kind of weird. Maybe just a little.

The next day, Amy decides not to check her dating profile at all. Good things come to those who wait. Right? Besides, maybe some wonderfully interesting person will message her in that time. She can dream.

As Amy is getting ready for work the next morning (which blazer/shirt/pant combo _will_ she choose?), she decides to give in and check her messages on the dating site. She has a handful of messages from some strapping young lads, and _oh no_.

She has one unread message from Rosa Diaz.

Rosa Diaz! Too-cool-for summaries, leather-jacket-wearing Rosa Diaz.

It reads: “Why do you keep looking at my profile and not messaging me?”

Oh. Right. The website keeps track of which profiles you visit, and Amy has been looking at Rosa’s profile probably too much in the last few days.

Amy doesn’t know quite what to say, so she doesn’t respond at all yet. She goes in to work and spends most of that morning formulating an appropriate response. She knows it’s probably not a great idea to fuss over this so much, but she can’t seem to help herself. Alright, fine – maybe she does want to impress Rosa. Maybe just a little bit.

When she goes online to message Rosa, though, she finds that she already has a message waiting for her.

“Since you’re so bad at this, let’s meet up this Saturday. I assume you both eat and drink, show up here.”

Rosa has the address of a hip-sounding New York City bar and restaurant attached to her message, and wow, Amy is pretty impressed now. The directness is very much appreciated, especially after how many awkward jokes and vague allusions to meeting up she’s been getting in her other messages.

Amy finally just buckles down and messages Rosa back without overthinking it (well, without overthinking it too much – and that sort of obsessive contemplation is kind of her thing).

“I enjoy both of those things! I’ll see you there. What time? And is this a nice place? What should I wear?”

Amy doesn’t have to wait long for a response.

“7. Whatever is fine, just don’t come in a full pantsuit like in your profile picture.”

It’s not a pantsuit! It’s a blazer/shirt/slacks combo, totally different. And oh, yeah, she’s now going on a date with her inexplicable online dating crush. She’s pretty excited about that. She’s so excited about it, in fact, that she’s now having an even harder time focusing on her paper work! Today is so full of ups and downs.

After a couple more days of paper work and cheap takeout food, Saturday finally rolls around. Date night. Amy stands in front of her closet, wondering what she’s going to wear. This is the first time that it’s ever been a problem that her entire wardrobe is basically comprised of business not-so-casual clothing. After systematically eliminating any inappropriate garments, Amy finds that the only outfit that remains is comprised of an oxford cotton shirt she stole from an old girlfriend and a pair of skinny jeans that she didn’t even know that she owned.

Well, she’ll definitely look the part of girl-who-likes-girls.

After messing with her hair in front of the mirror for far too long, Amy decides to just let it fall straight down. By now she’s going to be late if she doesn’t leave right away, so her makeup is more of an afterthought. The natural look is in now, right? Or is the really done-up look more popular?

Amy dismisses those thoughts. She uses one of those online ridesharing apps to catch a ride into New York City, which is probably the hippest thing she’s done in a long time. The car ride, taken with a driver who is either unable or unwilling to hold a conversation, allows all of her anxieties about the date to bubble up to the surface. Amy’s fears don’t even make any sense to herself, though – Rosa was the one who ended up messaging her. That should mean that Rosa likes her in _some_ way. Right?

Well, she’s about to find out, as the car pulls up to the bar & restaurant where she’s supposed to meet Rosa. Amy thanks her driver and steps out, surveying the place where they’re going to be meeting. It looks like a pretty hip establishment in a hip part of NYC, although she’s not entirely sure about that. It’s been a while since she’s actually been to the city, and she really has no handle on what’s considered cool here anymore.

Amy checks the time on her phone and realizes that she’s actually gotten here a little early. She decides to wait outside for Rosa to arrive.

And arrive she does, just a few minutes later. Rosa Diaz, of the bad profile picture, the “no” summary, and the five questions answered, shows up in full biker-chick-going-to-war regalia. She has on a sleek, black leather double-rider jacket, a draping white tee, precisely-fitted black jeans, and a pair of black combat boots. Amy swears that the whole world just shifted into slow motion and fog machines and stadium lighting.

Amy clears her throat and tries to focus on not being an embarrassing mess on this date.

“Rosa! Rosa Diaz,” Amy greets with a cheery wave. “Detective Rosa Diaz. Police Detective Rosa Diaz…”

“Those are all ways to greet me,” Rosa deadpans.

Amy exhales. Okay. Maybe she’s being a bit too neurotic.

“Sorry. I’ve never really done this before,” Amy says, one hand folded up into the other.

“Done what?” Rosa asks. “Greet another person?”

“No!” Amy says, perhaps a bit too emphatically. “No, sorry, I’ve never done this whole online dating thing before.”

Rosa just shrugs, in a way that Amy finds oddly comforting, in a way.

“Neither have I,” Rosa states simply.

“Oh! Okay. I thought you might have, since you just up and messaged me is all,” Amy says.

“Nah, I just noticed you checking out my page and thought you were pretty cute,” Rosa says, completely no-nonsense. “So, here we are.”

Amy finds herself blushing and self-consciously tucks wayward strands of hair behind both ears.

“Here we are,” Amy echoes. “Shall we?”

Amy gestures in a slightly too exaggerated way towards the entrance of the restaurant. She deflates slightly, until she sees the ghost of a grin on Rosa’s face.

“Yeah, let’s do it,” Rosa says.

Rosa opens the door and ushers Amy inside. Amy finds a wide grin spreading across her face, and though she knows that she’s jumping the gun big-time, she thinks that this might be the start of something really great.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This may get rewritten/expanded in the future, since I kind of rushed through it to get it in under the Femslash February deadline. In any case, as I always say, your feedback is always greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading, guys! Also, let me know if you want me to actually write what happens on their date.


End file.
